"Since you won't confess," she said to Lucky Pearl and Lucky Jade, "I'll have to suspend my investigation until a later date. But that trunk of yours contains several old paintings I've not seen yet. Would you mind opening it up for me?"
"We've mislaid the key," they replied together. "It hasn't been opened in ages. As soon as we find the key, we'll take out the paintings and send them over."
"That's no problem. I have tons of keys and can open any lock at all. Let me send for them." She gave an order to one of her maids, who returned in a few minutes with several hundred keys. As Flora tried them in the lock, her nieces resembled nothing so much as three corpses. They could not very well protest or prevent her from trying, but they were hoping against hope that the keys would not fit and that the trunk would stay shut.
But fortune favored the enemy. Flora did not need even the second key, for the first one fit perfectly. Opening the lid and glancing inside, she discovered the smooth, snow-white body of a man across whose thighs lay a flesh-and-blood laundry beater that was woefully limp but still big enough to shock. She could only imagine what it might look like when stiff.
Confronted with such rare merchandise, Flora felt a natural impulse to monopolize it. Without disturbing anything in the trunk, she let down the lid, relocked it, and launched into a tirade. "A fine thing you've been up to, with your husbands away! When did you smuggle him in, I'd like to know? How many dozens of nights has he slept with each one of you? Come on, out with it!"
The women's faces turned ashen with fright, but they said nothing, no matter how she cross-examined them.
"Since you won't confess, I have no choice but to go to the authorities." She told the maids to inform the neighbors that she had caught an adulterer in broad daylight and wanted them to come and attest to the fact, after which the man would be taken to court inside the trunk.
Her nieces withdrew for consultation. "She's bluffing," they said, "but if we don't clear matters up at once, her bluff may turn into reality. We'll have to come to terms with her and give him up for general use. Surely she won't sentence us to death!"
They approached Flora and apologized. "We oughtn't to have carried on behind your back. We know we were wrong and won't try to quibble about it. We simply appeal to your generosity, Aunt, to let the man out of the trunk so that he can confess and ask for clemency."
"And just what form is his confession going to take? I should like to have that settled in advance."
"To be quite candid, Aunt," said Cloud, "we've been dividing his time into three equal shares. We'll be glad to cut you in. In fact, on account of your age we'll give you first place in the roster."
Flora burst into laughter. "A fine penance that is! You keep him hidden away in your house and sleep with him for I don't know how many nights and only now, after you're caught, do you offer me a share! By that logic, when the authorities catch a robber, they wouldn't need to beat or torture him, they could just stipulate that anything he steals in the future will be forfeit while all the things he has already stolen are his to keep."
"Aunt," said Lucky Pearl, "what ought we to do, in your opinion?"
"If you want to settle the matter privately," said Flora, "you'll have to let him come back and sleep with me for as long as I like, until I've made up all the arrears due to me, after which I'll hand him back and we'll resume the one-person-a-night rotation. Otherwise we can simply settle it in court, which would mean breaking the family ricepot and letting everybody go hungry. Well, what do you say?"
"If we do that," said Lucky Jade, "you'll have to specify a time limit, three nights or five nights, say, after which you'll release him. You surely don't expect to be given carte blanche to keep him for months or even years!"
"I can't specify a time," said Flora. "Let me take him back with me and question him as to how many nights you three have slept with him, and then I'll keep him the same number. After that I'll hand him back and we'll say no more about it."
Although the nieces said nothing, a possibility had occurred to them: Vesperus loves us dearly and may well under-report the number of nights to her. So they agreed. "Well, he's only been here a night or two. Take him off and question him. You'll see."
Now that an agreement had been reached, the nieces were about to open the trunk and let Vesperus out so that he could go back with Flora. She, however, was afraid he might run away, and hesitated. "If he goes over in broad daylight," she said, "the servants may see, and that would look bad. We shall have to think of some way of getting him over in secret."
"Why don't you go back now," her nieces suggested, "and we'll send him over when it gets dark?"
"Don't bother," she said. "I have a better idea. There's no need to unlock the trunk. We'll just pretend it's full of old paintings that belong to me and call in a few stewards to carry it over with the man inside. No problem."
Acting on her own initiative, she told the maids to summon some stewards. Within minutes four men arrived and, hoisting the trunk onto their shoulders, bore it swiftly away.
Pity the three sisters! Their grief was as keen as that of any widow who ever said farewell to a coffin and yet, unlike the widow, they were unable to express it. They couldn't bear to have this live erotic album stolen from them in its trunk, and they were afraid, too, that the man inside would be worked to death by the old bawd. There was a road that led over there, but no road back. Was it not a bad omen that the picture trunk was carried off on men's shoulders like a coffin?
CRITIQUE
After reading the chapter in which they met at the temple, one expected that Flora's pleasure would precede Lucky Pearl's and Lucky Jade's, and that Vesperus's comments on Flora would be the thread that strung the pearls together, the tile that drew the jade in response. Who would ever have imagined that the author's mind would so resemble the Creator's in disposing independently of people and events and confounding all our expectations? The author has taken the woman easiest to seduce and placed her after the ones hardest to seduce, which is remarkable and fantastic in the extreme! He has made the thread that was to have strung the pearls together and the tile that would have drawn the jade in response into the very reasons Pearl and Jade are cast aside. The tempest in the bedchamber originates in a scene of noisy argument, which again is remarkable and fantastic in the extreme! How unpredictable is the authorial mind!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Poem:
After the trunk arrived at her house and she had dismissed the stewards, Flora did not open it immediately, but fetched a suit of men's clothes from her own boxes, together with a well-worn cap and a pair of shoes and socks, all of which had belonged to her late husband, and laid them out. She then unlocked the trunk and invited the paragon to step forth and dress, after which they greeted each other and sat down for an intimate talk. As might have been expected, Vesperus's nimble tongue, so adept at deceiving women, invented a lie or two, such as, "After seeing you in the temple, I longed for you day and night, but not knowing your honorable name, had no means of finding you. Fortunately Heaven has vouchsafed me this chance to turn bad luck into good, and now at last I am able to gaze on your fair countenance!"